strated and established beyond the shadow of a doubt. Not a single atom of created matter can be destroyed or lost. Its form and appearance may be changed, as well as its qualities, by combination; but no human power, or conjunction of skill, can utterly destroy a single atom, or a drop of water, or an insect, or the tiniest of all the tiny things which the Creator has made. Why, then, if a particle of matter, or a drop of water, cannot be lost or annihilated, seek to quench that spark of ethereal fire which the Great Architect has lighted up in the fragile and beautiful tenement of a precious infant? Science refutes such a crude philosophy, and proves by irresistable demonstration, that, as whatever is-must be, the infantile body will never so perish that it will be an utter impossibility for the Lord of Life, who fashioned it, to raise it from the dead and the Bible, in its inspired and infallible teachings, assures us, that as the soul contains no principle of dissolution, and is an uncompounded substance, it will live for ever, and * "Flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the war of elements, The wreck of matter, and the crash of worlds." Death-come at what hour of the day of life it may-is not the annihilation, but the enfranchisement of the soul of an infant. The imperishable grain is safely deposited in the eternal garner. It has "shuffled off its mortal coil" to exist and act in the immaterial estate. It lives near God's throne, awaiting the resurrection morn, always beholding the face of our Father in heaven, and revelling amid the undying splendours and rapt felicities of the beatific and eternal state! Heathenism, for many centuries, has treated the infant race with barbaric cruelty, and immolated thousands of them on the legion altars of a man-made and savage religious system, as an attempted expiation for the sins of the soul. The loud and piercing cry of Gentilismwhich has reverberated for ages-has been,"Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before Him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" Traditional autho rity taught them that "without shedding of blood is no remission:" and being desirous to propitiate the "Great Spirit"--the fearful and horrid concomitant has been, that parents' hands have seized the consecrated dagger, and reddened in the warm blood of their young children, and the repulsive rites of idolatry have been richly baptized with human gore! Thus have they, in their ignorant infatuation, committed greater sin in the very attempt to atone for sin. Infinite love required not such sacrifices. Strange indeed must have been the religious notions of heathenism concerning the Divine Being to suppose that those inhuman offerings, of which it boasted, could be well-pleasing in His sight! But they imagined He would "meet them as a man." Lashed by the irresistable power of a guilty conscience which they sought in vain to pacify, fearing and recoiling from the future, and led on by a superstitious and blinded priesthood, many became, like Herod, wholesale infanticides; others left their darling children to perish on the margin of sacred rivers, or be devoured by the wild beasts prowling on their banks; and many others "made them to pass through the fire." Such is an outline of the barbarous treatment of Gentilism to the infant race. Thank God! He has shown us "what is good." "Christ died for our sins." And all the sacrifice we have to make is that of " a broken and a contrite heart." How vastly different the conduct exhibited by a Christian parent towards the little ones given him by God! Christianity never deteriorates, but deepens and sanctifies the natural affections of the parental heart. It makes good parents as well as good men. Such an one regards his children as parts of himself, as possessing an organism of immortality, and as having capacities which not all the treasures of earth and time can satisfy and fill. He is drawn towards them by "the bands of love," and cherishes an attachment for them which no absence can lessen, no distance destroy, no crime overthrow, and which even death itself cannot annihilate. Full well he knows that he is answerable for each of those redeemed and deathless beings "committed to his charge" until they are able "to discern both good and evil," and that each has a part to play in the great drama of life. He therefore strives his utmost to train them up for the weal of humanity, the benefit of the world, the interests of eternity, and the glory of God. "When their intellect begins to develop itself," says the eloquent George Gilfillan, "he stands by, not merely watching the process with unutterable interest - and surely the sight of the evening star, breaking through clouds, is not so beautiful as the first shining out of an immortal soul in a child's dark or deep-blue eyebut seeking to remove every obstruction, and chase away every obscuring mist, before the dawning mind." No plumb-line therefore can fathom the deep and imperishable interest with which a Christian parent ever regards his legitimate and precious offsprings. How earnestly, too, he wrestles with "the Angel of the Covenant" for their early conversion to God! And when they have "passed from death unto life," and the peerless blessing of a converted heart and a new nature is obtained by faith in Christ, how rich and deep the tide of holy joy which overswells his more than satisfied heart! Never is man more like God than when he fully acts out the paternal character, and never does he approach so near the |